“Iron Lady” Biopic to Portray Thatcher as Demented Softie
Some call it propaganda, I call it lazy sexism, but very few people have anything good to say about the Margaret Thatcher Biopic that has recently gone into pre-production “The Iron Lady” (brought to you by the director of Mamma Mia!)
According to The Telegraph the screenplay of The Iron Lady depicts Baroness Thatcher as an elderly dementia-sufferer looking back on her career with sadness. She is shown talking to herself and unaware that her husband, Sir Denis Thatcher, has died. “It is a film about power and the price that is paid for power. In that sense, it is the story of every person who has ever had to balance their private life with their public career.”
Thatcher’s children have gone as far as to brand the film a “left-wing fantasy” and have railed against it’s treatment of their mother’s health, despite the fact that Carol Thatcher has fully exploited her mother’s dementia on a number of occasions to promote some fatuous memoir. What is offensive about the premise of the movie is that it has Thatcher, healthy or not it doesn’t matter, looking back on her life with regret. Did I spend enough time with my children? Was it violent of me to invade the Falklands? Did I balance the budget at the expense of good people??
I’ve read a good part of Margaret Thatcher: Downing Street Years and if there is anything I learned about Maggie it’s that she’s apologises for nothing. I was focused on the bit about the Commonwealth push for sanctions against South Africa during the late 80s. Mulroney and co. wanted lots of sanctions, Thatcher hated them and was quite sure that this whole “anti-apartheid” thing was just another reason for people to run about in the streets shouting and that the whole ordeal would be taken care of by level headed white South Africans. Sanctions happened anyway, apartheid fell, Maggie took a very “post hoc ergo propter hoc” view to brush off the whole sanctions thing, and then she declined a special invitation to the newly free South Africa because (and I paraphrase) she “didn’t think it would be a good idea to strut around South Africa proving she had been right”. LOLZ!!!
Despite being a bitch about South Africa, and well, a number of other things, Margaret Thatcher was one of the standout leaders of the 20th century. You may of disagreed with her policies, but everyone admits she was a master at what she did. But we can’t just watch her kick ass and take names on an international scale because she’s a woman. Somehow, when it’s a woman, there has to be another level. An emotional, feeling, motherly, crying, guilt-ridden level. Eighty year old Maggie Thatcher, demented or not, can’t just be sitting around the house patting herself on the back and talking to her dead husband about how awesome she was, oh no, she has to feel guilt. Movie Thatcher has to wonder: “I was a world-respected Prime Minister for ten years, I invented an economic philosophy that is revered all over the world, my name is a byword for discipline and honesty and rigour but…. but… was I nice?”
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Polonoscopy is a site devoted to political fluff. While I do appreciate that there are important issues out there… with respect… eh… don’t really care. Not here anyway, not now, that is not what Polonoscopy is about. Fluff. It’s all about image and perception in politics. Rather than vote for someone based on a record of public service and commitment to the meaningful issues of the day, wouldn’t you rather vote for someone who’s personality seems similar if only slightly more impressive then your own? Of course, we all would.
Alright, it is sexism. But “you may of disagreed with her policies, but everyone admits she was a master at what she did”…. REALLY? First I don’t agree with the “everyone”, but let’s say it’s a figure of speech. My point is, is that your reason for defending the bitch? You might as well say Stalin was really good at what he did too, because that seems fairly true as well. The only reason I would find to sort of defend her would be that at least she was a honest right-winged leader: she didn’t give a shit about the people. Or about anything else that didn’t fight the most blatant conservatism.
The last sentence was supposed to be “or anything else that didn’t FIT the most blatant conservatism”.
I’m not defending what she did, I’m defending her arrogance and her peace of mind. That’s why I brought up the whole South Africa bit. She was a bitch, but she was pretty ok with that. If there was a movie about Stalin standing teary eyed in his study, talking to the ghost of some chick he banged, I would be disappointed about that too. That wouldn’t be a movie though, because men are allowed to be cool-headed and calculating leaders. I think Margaret Thatcher deserves to be treated as the leader she was and not as a confused woman suffering dementia.
But again, I don’t see what the matter is. First of all, the movie hasn’t been made yet so it’s hard to know exactly what will be the nature of her regrets. Second, I agree there might be something in it that is linked with the fact that she’s a woman leader. But that’s politics; you make the loser look bad, with whatever you can. Too bad she’s a woman, it’s almost too easy. She lost, so by all political standards she deserves it. And there are movies with great leaders (not morally speaking) such as Stalin or Hitler that depict them as nuts, completely incompetent and lost in their own world, even though they ruled countries as wide as USSR or Western Europe, sometimes for decades. Consider the movie Downfall for instance.
So yes, maybe this movie can be considered lazy sexism, but that’s only one layer of the onion. And anyway, I find it hard to consider Thatcher a woman leader. She embodied perfectly what a patriarcalist government should be and she was way more manly (considering western gender standards) than any other British politician at that time. Furthermore, I don’t think the idea that she might feel regrets about her private life (“was I a good mother?”) is that far-fetched. She’s as conservative as one can be, and believe it or not, conservative women also abide to sexist standards. Just look at the Palin monster, you’ve written about it here before.
Plus, her son is the freaking biggest private weapon dealer in the world; I would start considering my children’s education too if that happened to my son.
Finally, it is possible that this movie will actually make people feel empathy for the Iron Lady. Show a monster at its weakest point, and people will start identifying themselves with it. I personnally felt empathy for Hitler when I saw Downfall. That’s scary, but the human mind is easily tricked. So all in all, she might actually get more respect thanks to that movie from people that wouldn’t give a shit about her otherwise.
So maybe you’re right, it’s a bit easy. But no ex-leader deserves anything. And icing on the cake, i’m eager to see that movie knowing that Meryl Streep will be Margaret.
Keep up the great work on the site. I appreciate it. Could use some more frequent updates, but i am sure that you got some better or other stuff to do like we all do. :p